Q: What is CBC?
A: The COIN-OR Branch and Cut code is designed to be a high quality mixed integer code provided under the terms of the Eclipse Public License. CBC is written in C++, and is primarily intended to be used as a callable library (though a rudimentary stand-alone executable exists). The first documented release was .90.0. (JF 04/01/05)
Cbc is designed to work with any OSI capable solver and in particular Clp. It used to be called Sbb (Simple Branch and Bound) but due to people confusing it with GAMS Sbb solver it has been renamed to Cbc.
Q: What are some of the features of CBC?
A: CBC allows the use of any CGL cuts and the use of heuristics and specialized branching methods. (JF 04/01/05)
Q: How do I obtain and install CBC?
A: Please see the Cbc website for details on how to obtain and install COIN-OR modules. (JF 04/01/05)
Q: Is CBC reliable?
A: Cbc is at version 1.01.00 so it is no longer a pre-release version - and yes it is reliable. (JF 06/15/06)
Q: Is it fast?
A: It is not very fast out of the box, but is very flexible so it can be very effective with correct use of cut generators and heuristics. For instance, cut generators can be switched off, on every so often or only at root node (which is probably best default). The stand-alone code has been much improved to try and make it faster for less experienced users. (JF 06/15/06)
Q: Is there any documentation for CBC?
A: If you can see this you have the best there is:-) Also available is a list of CBC class descriptions generated by Doxygen. (JF 04/01/05)
Q: Is CBC as fast as Cplex or Xpress?
A: No. However its design is much more flexible so advanced users will be able to tailor CBC to their needs. (JF 04/01/05)
Q: What are Cbc’s advantages?
A: It is designed to be less heavyweight than BCP or Symphony. It is very easy to add new cut generators and heuristics and branching methods such as lot-sizing variables. I need to publish some more heuristic methods as I have several I use for my own work which at present are too problem specific. (JF 05/24/06)
Q: How should I start to use it?
A: There is a stand-alone code cbc which I need to improve, both for ease of use and for default behavior.
There are also drivers in the examples directory.
The sample driver in Cbc/examples/sample1.cpp will solve many of the miplib test set as it is.
To add a new generator involves adding less than ten lines of code.
It is also possible to add heuristics in the same way and to influence the search - sample2.cpp and sample3.cpp expose more of the strategy as user code. (JF 05/24/06)
Q: What happened to the SBB code?
A: SBB stands for Simple Branch and Bound. When COIN-OR LP was being written, the Osi interface demanded an integer solver. An exception could have been thrown but anyone can write a branch and bound code in a day. With Strong Branching it was 460 lines of code, without 300 lines. Somehow the code kept growing and eventually it was moved it to its own project. Now the “Simple” is not as accurate and there was confusion with Gams Sbb code so was frozen as of Halloween 2004. All future development has been on Cbc (COIN-OR Branch and Cut) which is just a renamed version of Sbb. (JF 06/03/06)
Q: How does one get a list of the undocumented cbc executable options?
A: Run the cbc executable, set the verbose option to 15, and then enter a ? to get a list of all commands.
./bin/cbc
verbose 15
?
Q: What can the community do to help?
A: People from all around the world are already helping. There are probably ten people who do not always post to the discussion mail list but are constantly “improving” the code by demanding performance or bug fixes or enhancements. And there are others posting questions to discussion groups. (JF 04/01/05)
A good start is to join the coin-discuss mailing list where CBC is discussed. Some other possibilities include:
The -csv option
The option -csv <filename> causes cbc to print one line of key output statics in commma separated format in a file named
The -csv command works great with one data file. Is there a way to make it work with the -miplib option?
At present not, according to John. (That’s vindicating becuase I tried more things than I’d like to admit under the flawed assumption it did.) John sugggests creating a CbcCsv class and putting some code to do it in there. Sounds like a great enhancement, if someone’s looking to contribute <hint, hint>.
Order of options in the command line of the cbc executable matter
The command line of the cbc executable is parsed as if it were in the interactive mode. The take-away is that if your using the command line, and things aren’t working as you think they should, try ordering the commands in the sequence you’d use if you were interactive mode. (I don’t have any specific examples right now, but I know others have run into this too.)
How does one build and run a parallel version of cbc?
To build a parallel enabled version of cbc when running configure add the option --enable-cbc-parallel.
To run in parallel use the -threads option with cbc:
./cbc -threads 6 -unitTest -dirMiplib=_MIPLIB3DIR_ -miplib
where MIPLIB3DIR is the name of the directory containing the miplib3 mps files.
For a miplib example, say egout, should the output related to egout produced by the command ./cbc - miplib match what I’d get from executing cbc on egout directly?
No. There’s more to -miplib than simply running cbc on each of the miplib datasets (but I don’t know exactly what all the differences are).
Is there a difference in the default parameter settings when you solve a problem in Cbc’s interactive mode versus the command-line mode?
Should not be any difference - the commands are read at a single point in code, switching over after command line ones. <July 8, 2009>